Singles Going Steady: Sean Lennon, Eels, Califone

<b>5/15: GHOST OF A SABER TOOTH TIGER --</b>Sean Ono Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, his significant other of the past eight years, have just released the most inspired psychedelic headphone album of the year, a brilliant new chapter for Lennon. Details: 9 p.m. Thursday, May 15. Crescent Ballroom, 308 N. Second Ave., Phoenix. $18; $15 in advance. 602-716-2222, crescentphx.com.(Photo: Chimera)

Welcome back to Singles Going Steady, a weekly playlist of songs we recommend you checking out this week (or more specifically, this very moment). Some were chosen because the artist is appearing in the Valley some time in the next week. Others were chosen because they're new. The only thing they have in common is that we enjoyed them and we thought you might enjoy them, too.

OK, yes, this is making its second appearance on one of these playlists. But it's only gotten that much better with each listen, a wistful throwback to the golden age of psychedelic pop from Beatle progeny Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, his significant other of the past eight years. The production is a brilliant evocation of that era filtered through the sensibilities of someone who's probably listened to his share of Beck songs. But the lyrics are what ultimately seal the deal here as he does his father's love of Lewis Carroll proud with, "Say a prayer / for the Internet bill-i-on-aire / A solar flare / will burn the hair / of man and polar bear," before following through with, "Do you believe what you read in the tea leaves? / Messages from Jesus in the grease upon the grillied cheese?"

Last week, I featured a bittersweet portrait of a stubborn couple determined to ride out the hurricane warnings only to conclude, "And now I know it's much too late / Who will discover the remains?" Another highlight of the recently released "The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett," "Mistakes of My Youth" isn't nearly as dark a ride as Everett takes stock in the folly of his misspent youth and comes away from that experience resolved to stop hitting repeat. "I can't keep defeating myself," he sighs in that characteristic soulful rasp of his. "I can't keep repeating the mistakes of my youth."

Tim Rutili of Red Red Meat hangs the catchiest chorus on Califone's most recent record on a mantra of "watching the new world die." And it helps that the music is steeped in the head-on collision of rustic acoustic guitar and weird experimental noise that made the Wilco album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," such a triumph. That's apparently a hurdy gurdy on the intro with horns on the chorus.

For as much as I was prone to champion the sparseness of his early years, the extra textures favored by producer Richard Swift have only made Jurado's records that much more intriguing. "Magic Number" is a mesmerizing exercise in psychedelic chamber pop, easing you in with a finger-picked descending guitar part that wouldn't have sounded a bit out of place on the "White Album" before they hit you with the sweeping orchestration and Jurado's yearning vocals.

She may be best known in the U.S. mainstream as the female voice on "Well It's True That We Love One Another," a kitschy duet with Jack White on the White Stripes' "Elephant." But there's a reason White invited her to join him on that song, from her early records with Thee Headcoatees to the solo career that led to this year's "All Her Fault." This track is by the Kinks, a true obscurity Golightly somehow makes her own while honoring the spirit of the Kinks' original.

Jamie Cullum provides the vocal hook on this album-closing highlight of "Event 2" by this backpack-rocking hip-hop supergroup whose ranks include producer Dan the Automator, rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and Kid Koala. As the title would suggest, they go for a nostalgic tone, wondering, "Do you remember how you pushed and kept pushing / 'Til you broke through when nobody was looking? / Not to get into nostalgia/ But some of those things had value."

7. Samuel L Cool J, "Slip and Slide"

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Joel Marquard of Tempe's Gospel Claws has always had a strong ear for a pop hook, and now that he's turned his attentions to channeling the hook-intensive charms of classic '60s soul in this Samuel L Cool J project, the results are predictably catchy as hell. Producer Bob Hoag sets the tone with a beat that swaggers through the intro like Pete Thomas of Elvis Costello's Attractions in "Pump It Up" mode. Then, the bassist hits you with a Motown-worthy riff that was born to be doubled on piano (which it is, of course). And finally, lead singer Haendel Balzora makes his entrance on the oft-repeated chorus of "I want to get you on a slip and slide / Take a ride / Down to the pool at the end." It's a brilliantly constructed record, from the string part to the holding back on backing vocals until the perfect spot (before the sax break). Great decisions all around that would have definitely led to Berry Gordy, Jr. signing off on this one.

Her "Sadness Is a Blessing" was my favorite song of 2011, so I'm something of a sucker for her voice, which exudes all the vulnerability I've come to look for in a Lykke Li performance here, setting the tone with a wounded sigh of, "No one ever loved / No one ever lost as hard as I." See, that's why sadness is a blessing. It produces songs like this, which could have been a straight-up '60s folk song, but she takes it somewhere far more atmospheric to haunting effect. It's taken from the soundtrack to "The Fault in Our Stars."

The Bright Eyes singer pays tribute to Robert F. Kennedy's daughter, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, with the requisite reference to Camelot. But the opening riff is what grabs you, like the Arctic Monkeys turning up the post-punk quotient. And then, the song completely moves on from that vibe to breezy folk-rock with a killer chorus hook and some Harrison-esque slide-guitar work. It's an empathetic portrait of a woman born into a world built to be romanticized as Oberst sings of "the trappings of a name that you never could escape" and "these people" who "want to live in the past / some golden age they never had."

This latest taste of the lead Pretender's solo debut is the sort of mid-tempo pop ballad Hynde has been nailing since the days of "Kid," "Talk of the Town" and her vulnerable cover of the Kinks' "I Go To Sleep." In other words, she's playing to a major strength here while sending a message of love to a man who has her pleading, "Just want to be with you always / I wanna be around you always," like some great lost girl-group classic.